At present, there exist various websites providing Internet community services. In these Internet community sites, a community operator can establish a community by applying for the community to a relevant Internet Service Provider, and users can become members of the community by subscribing to the community. The community operator and the members compose one community.
In current Internet community services, one community continues to exist, in principle, as an individual, which is separate from other communities. Optionally, it could be designed to allow communities to share information according to operation methods of the Internet Service Providers.
In current Internet community services, horizontal movement from one community to another is possible, and each of the Internet communities includes one or more public or private bulletin board.
Further, a blog, which is an abbreviation of web log, refers to a new form of web service having complex functions of web bulletin boards, individual homepages, and communities. Typically, the blog service is a service provided to solve problems such as anonymity, unidirectionality, low contents notice rate, and the like, which are disadvantages of conventional Internet bulletin boards. A blog is a kind of individual media community having an exclusive area assigned on a network using simple text and graphics. That is, since a blog service can obtain the effect of security and confidentiality of an individual homepage while providing service subscribers with a simple creation technique that does not require knowledge related to use of existing homepage creation programs and creation of Internet homepages, it is an actual circumstance that the range of users has rapidly expanded.
More particularly, it is known that John Barger first used the term ‘web log’ in November of 1997, and the term ‘log’ has the meaning of logbook or travel diary. In a blog, which is a site for blogging and was invented by Evan Williams, a blog is defined as a “web page consisting of short sentences which are updated periodically, like a diary”. Thus, anyone can set such a blog in his own web site and download and use a blog program without fee as long as the blog has server space in which the blog program can be installed. Also, the blog is free of charge and is easy to handle, and, once it is set on a website, a user can always publish his sentences on-line whenever he wishes to write the sentences.
Until now, netizens have used individual homepages to let their existences or opinions be know on-line. To this end, however, they had to be able to handle webpage creation tools, such as Namo Web Editor and the like, and may also have had many difficulties in management, such as updating and the like, of the individual homepages. On the contrary, as mentioned above, the blog is free of charge and is easy to handle, and, once it is set on a website, a user can easily enter his sentences online, allowing anyone to make an easy access to the blog.
Recently, a portal site, Naver, (www.naver.com), has started provision of a service, ‘cafeiN’, and naver café has three hundreds of thousands of associations of like-minded persons, and two thousands of associations of like-minded persons are being newly established on average per day. The portal site, Naver, interlinks two services, that is, a service allowing a visitor to leave a sentence in a café and another service allowing the sentence and its source to be noticed in the visitor's blog.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating configuration of a conventional community on an Internet network.
Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional community can be implemented with a plurality of websites 120, 130, and 140 and a single community 150 and the like, all of which are connected through the Internet 110. The plurality of websites 120, 130, and 140 include first to N-th communities 121, 122, and 123, 131, 132, and 133, 141, 142, and 143, respectively. In this case, each of the first to N-th communities 121, 122, and 123, 131, 132, and 133, 141, 142, and 143 may include a blog 161, a miniroom 162, a mini-homepage 163, and the like.
FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of a conventional website having a community and a contents server, and FIG. 3 is a flow chart illustrating a conventional process of leaving a record in a bulletin board and visitor's book.
Referring to FIG. 2, a conventional website 210 can include a community 211 accessed by a plurality of clients 221, 222, and 223 and a contents server 212 providing a plurality of contents to the community 211. In this case, the plurality of clients 221, 222, and 223 access the community 211 and can leave a record in the form of a text in a bulletin board and a visitor's book provided by the community 211.
Referring to FIG. 3, in the conventional process of leaving the record in the bulletin board and visitor's book, the plurality of clients 221, 222, and 223 access the web site 210 (S310) and then access the community 211 established in the web site 210 (S320).
If the community 211 invites the clients to become a member (S330), the clients join the community 211 by taking steps to become a member (S340). To become a member depends on selection of the clients 221, 222, and 223 and it is not essential to making an entry in a visitor's book or a bulletin board.
Thereafter, the clients 221, 222, and 223 select the visitor's book (S350) and can leave a record in the form of a text in the visitor's book (S360).
In addition, the clients 221, 222, and 223 can select the bulletin board (S370) and can leave a record in the form of a text on the bulletin board (S380).
Also, in a community, for example, a blog that is a single community, a host desires to please visitors and feels enjoyment and satisfaction from a visitor's positive feedback. In this connection, conventional blogs have problems in that items attracting strangers' visits and inducing enjoyment are standardized. Also, conventional methods of leaving a record in the bulletin board and visitor's book have a problem of limited interaction. Moreover, the methods are plain since the first consideration is given to texts.